Yes, I am fine but this does make me look at some issues in my life for what they are, and admiting things is hard. I keep trying to believe certain things about how it affected me are not true and they keep coming back true and it is a dilemna for now. I know I will work it out but self denial is strong and it does not like being messed with. So I argue it out with myself and try and make sense of what to do with it in light of a lot of different aspects of life. thanks

I can totally relate. I just decided to accept that I'm attracted to guys and stop fighting it. It was emotionally draining to keep fighting it. I like girls as well, but very much attracted to guys. Don't know if I would ever date or be in a relationship with one though.

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*The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

Last weekend I was having sex with my wife, something I used to wish would happen more often. Problem was, although I was aroused, something felt wrong, and I couldn't reach orgasm. I felt like I was letting her down. I fantasized about giving my brother oral sex (part of my story of abuse), and was able to have an orgasm. I felt sick at many levels afterward. It felt like I was agreeing to incestuous abuse, which somehow made it feel like it wasn't abuse then. It also felt like I was cheating on my wife. Finally, it felt anything but straight, which is what most of the time I'm sure I am. I know that SSA can be common among survivors, and that knowing that sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. You're not alone, is all I'm trying to say. And if you hate the SSA, you're not alone in that either.

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"This is not my shame, this is their shame." Mona Eltahawy

DO I Hate the SSA yes I did at one time but then I started hating myself to. This lead to depression, and thoughts of just leave your wife to set her free and be gay. I do not believe that I am gay I do have fantacies about men yes I do use those fantacies to help me reach orgasim with my wife at times. I have accepted that my fantacies do not hurt anyone, they are mine. Turning 39 is the attraction a mid-life crisis is the fantacy just reliving what we were expected to do, I do not know.As a child I let others use and hurt me, that is OK I was a child. As an adult I can not let my thoughts and memories hurt me as an adult. I have kids that depend on me and a wife that loves me. Looking back will only cause pain...I look to the future with thoughts of good things to come, I my hope that we can all have those good thoughts.

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Remember Dog is God spelled backwards: The dogs in my life were the first ones to hear my pain and lick away my tears.

When i was from the of 5-im guessing 8 i was sexually abused by my babysitters oldest son who was a year older than me. the first encounter i can remember was at my own house in the bedroom where he started to do and ask sexual things from me. there was no intercourse but a lot of fondling and some oral. my mom and his mom eventually caught us in the act and put a stop to it, though i was never taken aside by my mom and told what had happened. the next few times that this had happened where at his house after school when i waited for my mom to pick me up. this time no one interupted the act and i never said anything to my mom about it. I hated being there and felt scared.

We later moved to a new city after my 3rd grade year. this is where i made new friends and left all that behind. i can remember my 4th grade year at this new school and having the biggest crush on this girl in my class. In 5th grade my dad almost attempted suicide but thank god did not follow through with it although at times i feel that is an option for myself in all this mental caos. i love him very much. my mom has always "worn the pants" in their relationship so i didnt have a very masculine figure in my life. This leaves me to believe why i dont feel very masculine when people around me say im a big dude and would be intimidated by me, i feel otherwise.

Jr. High is when i started to look at porn, my friends dad had mags and we would look at them. after being exposed to this i would masterbate a lot. and sometimes with my best friend we would masterbate at the same computer together. one sleepover at his house he fondled me and we touched each other and i dont know why i didnt stop it (i think it was because that was all i knew from earlier abuse). i had asked him to do oral and thats when it all stopped (again thats all i had experienced from earlier abuse and thought thats what i had to do).

Now in high school i can always remember getting erections in class from looking at girls bodies and not wanting to get out of my seat when the bell rang. i would masterbate to straight porn all the time (i have seen gay porn but i am not interested in it). i joined the water polo team cause i broke my collarbone and couldnt play football. i would occationally look at the guys "packages" and remember thinking am i gay because of that? never was i aroused by it but i have always questioned the fact. i always envied guys who would get the girls and thinking how can i be like that. i was always afraid of meeting girls and if one liked me i didnt know how to act or what to say. i can remember right before my first kiss with a girl another one of my good friends showed me how to kiss. him and i kissed for a brief moment, for some reason it felt comfortable (but again i didnt get aroused by this, and i think it was from the previous abuse, but it was kinda fun).

Now in college and always being against drugs i started to smoke weed a lot with my new college friends and got addicted to it. I also now had had my first sexual experience with a girl but she was shared between me and my best friend. it felt amazing but i never got to "finish" because she got sore (sloppy seconds). A little later i finally got to have sex with a girl one on one and again it was fun, exciting, and amazing, all the pipes worked. Now that im 25 and still in college with no real focus. I have had sex with 5 girls now. all of which were one night stands. except the 5th girl who i had sex with a couple times after i met her. i was affraid to get into a relationship with her and ended up cutting her off. to this day i have never been in a relationship with a girl. Afraid, scared, confused of how to act and what to say for them to like me. i have been told by many people of how charming and good looking i am and that any girl would love to be with me. But i feel completely otherwise, i have very low self esteem. very self conscious, i masterbate up to 3 times a day to straight porn and work out every day maybe to help with being self conscious and also still have feelings of SSA (does that make me gay? Growing up i was taught that sex was a bad thing and i think thats why im not at all aggressive to get it. It feels weird when i talk about doing sexual things to girls. Ive built up a wall/barrier and i dont trust people at all.

My situation now is, a year ago i did some shrooms with my best friend (who i explained about earlier) and my college friend who i would say now is also a very close friend to me. during the trip my best friend said something and it triggered all those feelings of SSA and of my CSA. we started to look at each other in a funny way as if he knew something about me, like i was gay or something. i got numb all over and started to sweat profusely. i felt like i had to tell them i was gay cause thats how he was looking at me. i told them i was attracted to men sometimes but i also like women. my college friend told me life is like a rollercoaster with ups and downs. it has always now been really weird being around my best friend and we cant look each other in the eye when we talk and he also looks like hes about to hurl. i think he said something to my sister cause she acts very weird around me now too like she knows something, which now i dont feel home as a sanctuary anymore. i have been pondering the idea am i gay? i got a girls number the other night but i am afraid to call and hang out with her. I hung out with a girl last night and felt confused, didnt know how to act, or what to say and couldnt get the SSA and am i gay off of my mind. but later that night i did masterbate and got off to looking at nude pics of girls. i cant concentrate at work, i have a short attention span when talking to people because i keep thinking about it. its driving me up a wall, i dont wanna talk to or hang out with my best friend since the 4th grade. i confine myself to my room and only come out when my sister isnt around. i dont care about myself and would not care if i died tomorrow (cause this would all go away). I want a relationship with a woman so badly just to show people im not gay. but im afraid and scared to be in one so i cant commit myself. I hate these feelings of SSA and am i Gay? and why did i have to be a victim in CSA. I am VERY depressed right now and this has led me to finally do some research on this whole SSA, am i Gay, and the CSA. Also i am trying to get in touch with a T. this site has been helping me cope with this, now knowing im not the only one.

Wow this is the issue. I used to feel alone with this, not any more! I hate using fantaises to complete with my wife. Sometimes we do it and I cannot finish anyway. Oh well. Wrestling with this for years was harder than coming to grips with the truth. Dealing with the desire is another thing. I agree that hating the SSA can equate to self hatred. Accepting and embracing the truth about myself is making it eaiser to deal with. I talked to my wife and explained where I was at this time and some difficult memories that I have been struggling with and she was so sweet to me. There has been some bitterness about my issues but she was understanding and she cried when I told her about how I figured out a question I had been wrestling with that confirmed the daily nature of the abuse for over 9 years. It is pending in the my story section and I wrote a poem about it. It is an agonizing relief to figure this out.I accept myself with SSAs and I feel more me than I have in a long time. Being who you are is just about being who you are. If others cannot accept this it changes nothing but being real is the only real choice. I thank all of you here for helping me get to this point. I cannot define myself per-say. But I am making some progress which is good. thanks gang, owl

I've never had thoughts about this, haven't fantasized either, but a lot was said that (embarrassingly) made sense to me. I'm here because I had a very short row with my wife last night, and I posted it in the "Survivors of Female Abuse" forum. I got a response from Irishmoose where he heard from his wife something mine had said too: "go marry a man then". I've been fearful of this forum because I feared I would be gay (or wonder "if") if I ever entered.

I'm writing also because something Wounded said resonated with me: "It is like I want to put myself in places where I may be abused (validated) again." My post last night was a declaration that I needed to be VALIDATED as a man, like a man, by a man.

Could I be getting my old abuse messages confused with my needs for male validation? Or am I (maybe) seeking what "normal" validation was to me, which was in a abusive relationship? This is a little scary to me, but I've got to ask this.

I don't think I'm alone. I hope I'm not. I'll take any suggestions regarding re-posting this elsewhere (or not). But this subject, actually talking about it, is FREEING. Shame has had its hold on me for too long. This is liberating.

Shaun, regarding that, I read somewhere in here that in Ken Singer's "Evicting the Perpetrator" addresses this a lot. I remember it being stated he has posted a lot of it here at MS. I'll contact Ken myself, but if you guys have any links, I'd appreciate them. Thank you.

I'll be fair and share what I find.

EDIT: I PM'd Ken, and he replied he didn't post much about the book while writing it. He didn't have memory of things I'd thought he'd written, so I was misinformed about this. Sorry

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